5. Hiroshi Tanahashi and David Finlay Jr. def. “Switchblade” Jay White and YOH after White refused to help YOH when he was hit with Finlay’s Prima Nocha stunner. One thing of note is that Finlay is now sporting almost a Kid Rock rocker kinda look to him. White attacked Tanahashi after ahead of their block match tomorrow.

Very unique and fun match with Yano this year deciding to try and play it straight-laced, but always having the temptation to resort to his longtime cheating ways. Then the irony of Ishii using Yano’s own tactics to beat him was really well done from a storytelling standpoint. Enjoyable stuff.

While both Juice and Tonga had good performances here, the match when looking at its complete form was kind of underwhelming. Tonga needed to have a good performance out of the gate coming off the big angle at the G-1 Special and while he himself did deliver, the overall match not being all that great might hurt his case to some. However, him beating Juice does earn him a future US Title shot sometime in the fall. The other weird thing is that Juice, now as champion, didn’t have to me the same pizzazz and fire as he did when in the chase. Time will tell if this is an anomaly or its the classic case of being better in the chase than as champion.

Very good match. SANADA is just so damn impressive and rarely ever puts on a good performance, while Goto continues to be at the top of the heap for putting on the best final minutes in his matches in all of wrestling. Good stuff.

Fantastic match, although funny enough I thought their New Japan Cup match earlier this year was a tad better. Sabre, while the best technical wrestler in all of wrestling, every time out gains a little bit more seasoning in becoming an all-around complete performer. Ibushi, when he’s on, is one of the best going and it appears in this tournament, he’s dialed in. Whether that lasts, we will see, because as good as Ibushi is, he’s also one of the more inconsistent performers at the same time. This was good Ibushi and good Sabre and this was real well done.

While it clearly didn’t have the atmosphere as their G-1 Finals match last year, because very few occassions have that kind of atmosphere, this was still one helluva sensational main event. Omega definitely rebounded from this outing at the G-1 Special and put on a great performance and Naito, after having a somewhat pedestrian 2018 thus far, showed here why he is one of the most complete and charismatic performers in the business. The second great match of this tournament, highly recommended viewing.

Overall, top to bottom, thought Day 1 was a little better than today’s show, mostly due to the disappointing outing from Tonga and Juice, but it had a better top match with Omega and Naito than Day 1 with Tanahashi and Suzuki. We are off the races with this tournament and I am jazzed for the rest of it.

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Wrestleview.com’s Jason Namako and Greg McNeish did an audio review of Day 2 of the G-1 Climax that can be heard below.